A Small Act of Grief Literacy, Hiding in Your Inbox

Clicking through my promotions box, delete, delete, delete, delete… wait, what’s this?

The subject line of an email from Etsy made me pause and open. It offered me the opportunity to opt out of Father’s Day emails. The message acknowledged that Father’s Day can be difficult for many people and gave me a simple choice: if I preferred not to receive Father’s Day promotions, I could click a button and skip them.

How thoughtful of Etsy. Some people’s fathers have died. Some never knew their fathers. Some are estranged. For others, Father’s Day may stir up sadness, relief, longing, anger, regret, gratitude, or very little at all.

Moreover, this one little promotional email is a glimmer of grief literacy.

I became curious and started looking into whether this was becoming more common. It turns out Etsy isn’t the only one. Over the past few years, a growing number of companies and organizations have begun offering customers the opportunity to opt out of certain marketing emails. The trend appears to trace back to 2019, when a flower company called Bloom & Wild began offering customers the option to opt out of Mother’s Day emails after hearing from people for whom the holiday was difficult. Now companies ranging from Canva, DoorDash, Levi’s, and Ancestry to nonprofits and charities have adopted a version of this approach, and some include Mother’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and some pregnancy/baby in their opt-out programs.  

I am certain this trend is not being driven by empathy alone. As someone who has grown an email distribution list and sends a monthly newsletter, I look at my open and unsubscribe rates, even though I am not trying to sell anything or raise money. Marketing departments have likely noted higher unsubscribe rates on promotional emails for these specific holidays. They would rather recipients opt out of a few holiday-specific emails than lose them as subscribers altogether.

Regardless, I am thrilled to learn of this growing recognition that the grief from death, estrangement, infertility, miscarriage, caregiving, and complicated family relationships is real and an ordinary part of human life.

We can increase grief literacy by offering it as the reason for unsubscribing when we do so.